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Many Kenyan voters who are now fairly familiar with mobile phones (many of them are more complex to operate than a simple email address) have no idea how most of their respected elected leaders operate with the most important communication and information tool of this century—the Internet.
This is what happens in some of your cabinet minister's offices.
Minister walks into the office (usually at 3pm or 4pm after a long leisurely 5 course lunch at some hotel at the expense of the tax payer of course) and secretary hands him a print out of an email that has arrived for his attention.
Minister writes down reply in long hand in broken English and the sort of grammar that a Standard Two pupil would correct.
Hands over the scrap of paper to his overworked secretary who types in the message in some semblance of the English language and opens the minister's email account and sends back the reply. Secretary checks if the Minister has received any new mail. Sees a cheeky email from a "young woman admirer" from K-street. Makes her day as she reads it slowly savoring every detail and wonders whether it is worth the risk forwarding...
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TECHNOPHOBIA is not a reserve for the cabinet. One example with suffice in disabusing that perception. More than 70% of our dons at the public universities have no e-mail address(FACT). No faculty has a website worth writing home about except some confetti masquarading as concrete. If you want to prove that just try electronic enquiry which never go through and if it does goes to a dean's secretary on a good day and never acted on.
ReplyDeleteAll their talk about changing with the time at the campuses is heated air at best and deception at worst. You won't believe it that our Lecturers still exclusively use BBs and set exams in long hand for secretaries to labouriesly type. No wonder exams and tests have price tags.
The bunge chaps have e-mails to decorate their business cards. The dinosaurs thinks it chick and hype to have e-mail address. No wonder they give it out to K-street customers who use it 'appropriately'. Kaparo would know better. The internet at bunge is only useful to secretaries and idlers in MPs offices. These guys are products of our lazy reading culture. No research no reading thus the poor/slang communicationand and quality of debate.
Our leaders' only strength is shameless expediency and unity in increasing their pecks. But with the commercialized political landscape, who will exterminate these leeches?
On a different note Mwalimu Taabu, what does BB stnd for? U r supposed to be my BB and now u say professors use the BB. I have been trying to resist the urge to ask lakini leo lazima niulize bana. What does it mean?
ReplyDeleteSio wa ubaya lakini nilienda boarding primo na BB ilikuwa BlueBand. Niongezee msamiati chalii if u dont mind.
Bw Vikii BB between me and you = "BIG BROTHER", figuratively that is. The BB for this post had nothing to do with that sacred relationship between us. The lazy 'old' Taabu introduced abbreviations for names to make life easy. Here BB=black board - reference to old yellowed notes dons use year in year out. Hope that makes you day. A crate/bottle of your favourite BEVERAGE and bill me, ama?
ReplyDeleteOK! Thank u very much bro. Eehh can I then get ur credit card number, time of expiration and the security code at the back of the card? They asked for it at the liquor store.
ReplyDelete